At last: Ultrabooks for gamers

If you’re thinking of buying an Ultrabook soon, don’t. Intel has revealed that its next generation of notebook and desktop processors has at least double the graphics processing power of the current generation, meaning Ultrabooks will finally be suitable for some serious computer gaming.

Not to mention those other, more work-related things you do on your Ultrabook in order to get that tax deduction. Like spreadsheets. They’ll just fly on the new Ultrabooks.

The fourth generation of Core chips, also known as “Haswell" chips, are said to be already in the hands of PC makers, meaning that PCs using those chips should be just around the corner, quite likely making their first appearance at the Computex trade show in early June.

We already know that Haswell will bring big improvements to the battery life of notebooks - we could see notebooks with a battery life of 24 hours on a single charge - but up until now it’s never been revealed just how much better the graphics performance will be, too.

And indeed, the graphics power is so souped up, Intel has decided to give it its own brand, “Iris", and create different versions of Haswell, some of which will feature Iris graphics and some of which will not.

Desktop PCs running high-end 4th-Gen Core chips that include Iris will get a whopping three-fold increase in their 3D graphics processing power compared to desktops running current 3rd-Gen Core chips, the biggest generation-to-generation increase that Intel has ever achieved with its graphics.

Ultrabooks that have Iris will receive a more modest doubling of 3D graphics speed compared to current 3rd-Gen Ultrabooks - still a big improvement, and enough to push the notebooks into the “good enough" category for a lot of 3D games.

Comparing 4th-Gen Core + Iris Ultrabooks to Intel Core 2 Duo notebooks, which are still pretty common, you get a mammoth 25-fold improvement in graphics, Intel says. Yes, Intel has come a long way when it comes to the graphics power of its chips, which not so long ago were vastly underpowered compared to graphics chips from the likes of AMD Radeon and Nvidia.

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Iris will bring with it improvements that aren’t related to gaming, too, Intel says. It will be able to run Ultra High Definition displays (potentially making your laptop the only device in your house that can deliver UHD videos to your UHD TV); it will shrink videos much faster; and it will be able to power three monitors at the same time, giving you a big, big desktop for all that tax-deductible work you do between games.